> Ultimately, people aren't making Steam accounts because of the Steam workshop or Steam forums or Steam chat or what have you
As a broad generalisation this is baldly wrong. I use a Steam account and buy things there because the platform has the things that you mention (on top of a multiplayer API that generally works pretty well). If it didn't have those things, I wouldn't use it anywhere close to how often I use it now. A very high percentage of the games on it are also available on other platforms (publisher-specific, GoG, the dev) and those are not materially worse than Steam if you only consider distribution.
As a broad generalisation this is baldly wrong. I use a Steam account and buy things there because the platform has the things that you mention (on top of a multiplayer API that generally works pretty well). If it didn't have those things, I wouldn't use it anywhere close to how often I use it now. A very high percentage of the games on it are also available on other platforms (publisher-specific, GoG, the dev) and those are not materially worse than Steam if you only consider distribution.